Bank Severnaya Kazna’s BOD Chairman Vladimir Frolov believes the bank’s current financial troubles have been caused by a hostile takeover attempt.

‘Starting October 13, 2008, the bank’s customers were flooded with text messages and ICQ alerts claiming the bank was in great trouble. It only sounded natural since the whole world has been affected by a financial crisis, and Russia is no exception. So it really is the best time to alarm the people,’ the bank executive said in the course of a Channel 4 interview.

Vladimir Frolov claims some other bank and Sverdlovsk Region Government were actually behind this negative publicity campaign. He believes those were their actions that made it impossible for the bank to meet its liabilities for two weeks in a row, so it’s their fault that Bank Severnaya Kazna had to impose limits on the cashing in of deposits, Internet bank payments, and ATM transactions.

At the same time, customers started taking out their money from the bank’s deposits long before October 13, 2008.

According to their official report (available via Bank24.ru’s website), the amount of money in the private individuals’ deposits dropped by 956 million RUR as early as September 2008. The bank had 20,641,069,000 RUR in these deposits on September 1, 2008 and only 19,684,671,000 RUR a month later.

It is also probable that a certain amount of money was taken out in the first half of October as well.